Jonathan government of not giving him "tips" on how to kick-start his
administration on May 29.
He spoke on Thursday when a committee from the Centre for Human
Security of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, presented a
five-point policy document to him at the Buhari Support Organisation
office in Abuja.
Hours before the event which held behind closed doors, the All
Progressives Congress, insisted that the Federal Government was not
cooperating with the transition committee set up by the
President-elect.
"Buhari regretted that the outgoing government that is supposed to
give him tips on how to take off has done nothing so far," Garba
Shehu, the Director of Media and Publicity of the All Progressives
Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation, told journalists after
the presentation by the committee.
Shehu added that the President-elect "thanked the Obasanjo initiative
for the gesture, assuring the committee that his incoming
administration will be needing advice as time goes on."
Areas covered by committee in the document include the economy,
security, power, education and infrastructure.
He said that Obasanjo had set up a think tank to carry out a study on
the challenges facing the country in the five key areas.
The study, he added, was started four months ago "so that the outcome
will be made available to the incoming administration after the
election."
He also revealed that Nigeria's former High Commissioner to the United
Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade, who headed the power committee, gave
various stages of the proposed power sector development plan to
include short-term, medium-term, long-term solutions.
Under the short-term solution, the plan seeks to raise the country's
power generation to 10,000 MW within a very short period of time.
He added that the president-elect described the intervention of
Obasanjo and his team as a great impetus for the incoming government.
The vice-chairman of the committee, who is a former Minister of
Finance, Kalu Idika Kalu, said, "We have looked at education,
security, economy, power and Infrastructure. Those are the areas we
have made recommendations and which we hope the new administration
would be able to work on."
He further explained that the president-elect was very happy that they
had been thinking about how to help him hit the ground running.
The Chairman of the centre's governing board, Akin Mabogunje. who
also spoke to journalists after the event, said the committee had been
working on a number of critical issues for the development of the
country.
According to him, a delegation of the committee members involved in
the preparation of the policy document was sent to present the report
to the President-elect.
Earlier on Thursday , the APC described as untrue, a statement
credited to the spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party, Oliseh
Metuh, that the Jonathan administration was cooperating with the
transition committee constituted by the President-elect.
It also described Metuh in a statement signed by its National
Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, as a man with "an incurable disdain
for truth."
The PDP spokesman had in the said statement accused the APC of
raising a false alarm over happenings within the Jonathan and the
Buhari transition committees.
However, Mohammed insisted that the uncooperative attitude of the
Jonathan team had continued despite its public posturing.
The APC statement Read, "We say with all sense of responsibility
that as of today, May 14, 2015, just about two weeks to the May 29
handover date, no shred of information as to the status of governance
from any ministry, department or agency of government has been given
to our transition committee."
"If that qualifies, in Metuh's lexicon, as cooperation, then there is
a problem somewhere. We dare Metuh or anyone for that matter, to
controvert the fact that not a line of handover note has been handed
over to our transition committee."
The APC also restated its earlier call to Metuh to urgently undertake
a course on how to be an opposition party spokesman so that he would
not talk or write himself into avoidable troubles in the days ahead.
It equally admonished him to always verify information available to
him in order to separate rumours from facts.
No comments:
Post a Comment